Where Women are out of Place.

White Ribbon, Volume 8, Issue 86, 1 July 1902, Page 1

Where Women are out of Place.

By Miss Sarah R. Perkins, oi Eastbourne. Behind the Bar.

Where, more than anywhere else in the world, are women out of place ? Unhappily, there is far more than one career in the world in which women tend to lose their womanly qualities and to degenerate ; but the one place above all others in which they are most apt to injure theii own best selves and often to do a fatal amount of harm to others, is a public-house bar. If we of the British Empire were not blunted to it by custom and habit, the sight of a woman in such a place as this would revolt us, and public opinion would rise and sweep at least this evil away at once. Think of it for a moment! Think what it must be for a young girl to stand behind a bar all day, to t>e in the midst of that atmosphere reeking of spirits and tobacco, to have before her eyes constantly coarse men and degraded women, to be the butt of every pleasantry, coarse or doubtful, that any man of any sort may choose to address to her, to be continually on her feet for all the long hours a public house is open, to lie under the constant temptation of drinking to excess herself, “treated” as she often is-all this is surely enough to make us long to put a stop to such

an employment, merely for the woman’s sake alone. The Temptation to the Men Customers. But her side of the question is far from being the only one to be considered.

There is the custc :ier to be thought of—what of him ? Alas ! is it not quite certain that the presence of a woman behind the bar is a temptation to him ? tempts him to linger longer than he otherwise would ? to drink more than he otherwise would ? for, of course, he cannot stay to chat with her without drinking at the same time “ for the good of the house.” There cannot be any

doubt whatever that a bar attended only by men loses much of its danger and is not nearly so attractive: there is not anything like the same temptation to enter, still less to linger, for those who are not yet topers. Where there are no Barmaids. The idea of prohibiting the degradation of womanhood in this capacity is not a new one, and is growing in vigour in many countries. If we of the British race do not take care, in this as in some other ways, we shall be finding ourselves falling behind in the march of civilisation. Barmaids have long been prohibited in Sweden and Norway; and “ ein Weiber—Kneipe ” (a woman’s drink-shop) is a contemptuous German term for a bar (unusual there) where women are employed. The custom has never been known in the United States; a recent American writer says that what struck him almost more forcibly than anything else in England was the way in which our women are allowed to act as bar-tenders. Within this last year the employment of barmaids has been forbidden in Burmah and in Calcutta; and more lately still it has been decreed that no woman below the age of forty shall serve in a bar in Buda-Pesth. Evils of the System. ' Cannot the decent people of this land, abstainers or not, band together to bring the evil to an end here? The evils cf the life are enormous. On its moral

dangers it is hardly necessary to dwell. Its danger to health is great also. A movement was started during last autumn to reduce —think of it!—to reduce the hours of barmen and barmaids to sixty a week ; and at a barmen’s meeting, held in support of it, a barman stated that the usual hours were a hundred a week now, and that the system yearly “crushed the lives out of thousands of men and women.” Of course, no one would desire to promote any measure which would turn the barmaids at present in employment suddenly adrift ; but there is no reason why the occupation should not be prohibited for the future. Doubtless some will raise the old cry—always raised when any reform is suggested—that we are trying to take the bread out of women’s mouths. But, to put the matter on its lowest ground, b is a poor way of helping the female to suffer them to drive men out of employment and thus to prevent them from marrying and supporting a wife. If the public-house is to be allowed to exist at all, let it be in the hands of men exclusively. The Decoy Birds of the Liyuoß Traffic. I plead for something practical to be done, and at once. The Hospital of last April, in an article entitled “Sirens who lead to drink,” said : “ Barmaids are the sirens who lead young men to drink. Of that there can be no doubt, and the question is whether the purveyors of alcohol should be allowed to use up such a mass of maidenhood as is annually sacrificed to the trade merely for the sake of giving additional attractiveness to the drink they sell.” It was the landlady of a public house herself who told me that nothing would induce her to allow a daughter of hers to become a barmaid. And it was the proprietor of a hotel who said, speaking on this subject in my hearing: “If the Temperance people want to do something to check drinking, let them do that.”